Who’s Afraid of Mexicans?

This doesn't account for Arizona's passage of numerous anti-illegal immigration ballot propositions last November.

I have a related quibble in that the study Kerry is quoting indulges in the same maddening error so much of the media indulges in that more or less assumes immigrants=illegals, immigrants=Hispanics, and Hispanic=immigrant. Speaking from my own personal experience, I grew up in an immigrant ghetto and am myself a first generation American, but in my old hood -- the South Ward of Newark -- the immigrants were from Portugal, mostly legal, and we check off "Caucasian" on the census form. Move to the North Ward of Newark, and you'll find the rate of Hispanics approaches 100%, but since they are overwhelmingly Puerto Rican, not only are they not "illegals," but they aren't technically immigrants either.

The flip side of the North Ward can be found in areas like Colorado Springs or Charlotte or even, recently, New Orleans. There, as opposed to many Hispanics, all of whom are legal, you'll find very few Hispanics, nearly all of whom are likely to be illegal (and only a portion of whom are likely to be Mexican.)

Meanwhile, I personally participated in harboring an illegal immigrant for nearly a year -- my (caucasian) Canadian girlfriend.

Ignore my first sentence, please.

While the first clip is most likely true, I would prefer statistics that are less than seven years old. What exactly is the implied indictment of these town councils? There is a passing reference that townspeople are worried about losing jobs but that is dismissed as unlikely to be true. What, then, do you suppose actually causes such action if there is such little interaction with "Mexicans?" Is it pure xenophobia or conservative reactionism or ignorance or what ... ? Further, it seems a bit disingenuous to let the reader think that Oologah is some isolated nowheres-ville, considering it's only a thirty minute drive to downtown Tulsa, a city of nearly 400,000. There is probably more to the job market surrounding Oologah than their population of 883 would at first suggest.

As far as the Great Migration, I'm not sure I see how the two are comparable. The Great Migration involved people moving from one part of the country to the other as opposed to foreign born immigrants illegally moving from another country to the United States. Also, there was no Social Security system or any of the other federal services that are often tapped into by illegal immigrants (many times by stealing identities) and their American-born children.

Though, I'm sure it's not intended, the phrase "bringing culture and identity" could be read the wrong way. It's not unreasonable to believe there was a culture and an identity in Missouri before the Great Migration.

I'm usually pretty sympathetic towards immigration stories, I just didn't think this one was very good and certainly not illuminating. We'll have to do better if we're going to convince the country that immigration is immi-great. (to borrow a phrase)

This is one of those findings that is paradoxical only if you don't think about it very hard. I.e., "crime has gone down even though imprisonment is up!" Well, yeah, if you imprison more criminals, there's not as much crime.

Same sort of thinking here: "Communities that pass anti-illegal-immigration laws don't have as many immigrants!" Which is, if you flip it around, the equivalent of saying: "Communities with lots and lots of immigrants don't tend to pass anti-immigrant laws!," which isn't very surprising if you take two seconds to think about the mathematics of getting such a law passed in a community with 30-50% immigrants.